To be nominated in both Leading and Supporting categories at the same Oscar ceremony is a rare feat some actors have been lucky enough to achieve. Most often, though, AMPAS will pick a role to celebrate and only bless the performer with one nomination. Actors that came close to the elusive double nomination include people like Meryl Streep in 2002, Al Pacino in 1990, Jane Fonda in 1978, and today's Almost There case study, Oskar Werner in 1965.
This Austrian performer, famous for films like Truffaut's Jules and Jim, was nominated in the Best Actor category for his work in Ship of Fools. That same year, he was probably close to a Supporting Actor nod for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold…
Adapted from John le Carré's homonymous novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a magisterial portrait of espionage in the age of the Cold War. The narrative focuses on a risky plot by which an MI6 officer, Alec Leamas, pretends to fall into a spiral of alcoholism and depression to catch the attention of the East German Intelligence Service. The plan is for him to be contacted as a potential source of confidential information, to act as a traitor in order to sow discord in the ranks of the enemy.
In bleak black-and-white imagery and a sense of overwhelming moral rot, director Martin Ritt conjures a universe where sincerity has long died and duplicity lives in its stead. Hopelessness covers every surface, like a sticky patina of spiritual pollution, and any hint of joy is cause for suspicion. Amid such dejection, Richard Burton plays Leamas as a man full of fire and fury, a blazing volcano of performative misery. His acting is purposefully showy, the sort of work that consumes the frame and is always on the precipice of absurd woe.
Burton's great in the role, but his approach can be perilous if it's not properly balanced by the other actors. Entering the narrative after its halfway point, Oskar Werner brings that needed balance to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Werner plays Fiedler, Leamas' main interrogator once he arrives in East Germany. He spends much of his screentime in dialogue with the British man, trying to ascertain the truth of his intentions and the veracity of the information he brings. Memorably costumed in leather and a jaunty hat, Fiedler is a disconcerting presence, affable and casual when one would expect him to be like a predator sniffing for blood. There's a genial quality to the way he holds his body, occupies the space, and gives plenty of chance for his prisoner to incriminate himself.
Throughout all this, Werner's looser than anyone else on the cast, even providing this gloomy drama with its only bright smiles and flashes of movie star charm. However, there's always a persistent hint that Fiedler's attitude is a studied affair, a tool of the smart interrogator rather than a reflection of the man's character. His warmth is carefully weaponized and whether it's real or not is beside the point. What matters is how he mulls over Leamas' words, how he comes to his conclusions, and acts on them.
Especially when sharing scenes alone with Burton, Werner exudes the authority of a man who doesn't see the purpose of overplaying his hand or performing his power to others. He's a believer in his righteousness, a patriot, and perhaps too intelligent for his own good. Once the film twists itself into a trial and Fiedler's life is on the line, Oskar Werner allows some variation to enter his acting.
His only big flourish comes in representing Fiedler's overconfidence in his judgment. Then, only then, we can see a hint of the ham, of the manic intensity of a public speaker trying to get a rise out of his audience. It's fitting and it lays the groundwork for the trial's conclusion when Fiedler's triumph becomes his failure, his end. Anger and panic suddenly burst through the man's confident placidity like water bursting through a collapsing dam. He knows it's over for him.
While we're rooting for Leamas in as much as we're ever rooting for a Le Carré protagonist (his is a cynical literary canon), we don't feel any joy at Fiedler's fate. I find no problem imagining other actors savoring each line of the character, twirling their invisible mustaches while playing Fiedler as the master manipulator that he's not. The world of this film has no place for such outward malevolence or the schadenfreude a villain's failure might imply. Werner's deeply humane and pointedly underplayed take on the character a necessity for the picture's success.
It's easy to overpraise an actor who surprises the viewer, someone who contradicts the expectation and challenges the audience with their choices. However, in Werner's case, this odd reluctance to give in to the role's performative villainy is in perfect synchronicity with the text he's working from. John Le Carré wrote about systems of governance and power dynamics, letting his character's interior lives percolate at the margins of the plot, almost out of sight though still visible to the attentive eye.
Following his example, Martin Ritt trusts his actors to perform in such a way that the mechanisms of their role in the spy game are always forefront, while their humanity is relegated to the background. They must not overplay their interiority or else it would be a betrayal of the text. It's a difficult challenge, being opaque and approaching characterization as a complement to the performance rather than its centerpiece. Oskar Werner's Fiedler is a masterclass on this type of acting.
Werner's work would earn him a Golden Globe win as well as a BAFTA nomination, but AMPAS chose five other men over him. They were Martin Balsam in A Thousand Clowns, Ian Bannen in The Flight of the Phoenix, Tom Courtenay in Doctor Zhivago, Michael Dunn in Ship of Fools, and Frank Finlay in Othello. Balsam would end up winning the prize for his solid work in the adaptation of Herb Gardner's play, his first and only appearance in the annals of Oscar history.
As mentioned before, Oskar Werner didn't have too much to cry about despite his snub. After all, he was recognized with a Best Actor citation for Ship of Fools. In that category, he competed alongside his The Spy Who Came in From the Cold's costar, Richard Burton. As luck would have it, both men perplexingly lost to Lee Marvin Cat Ballou. Neither Burton nor Werner would ever win an Oscar, though the British thespian came close numerous times.
As for the Austrian actor, he would only be in four more films after 1965. This was partly due to his work as a stage performer, partly due to his alcoholism. His last picture, 1976's Voyage of the Damned, got him another Golden Globe nomination but AMPAS ignored him once more. He died in 1984, at the age of 61, less than two days after the demise of his Jules et Jim director François Truffaut. Thanks to his brilliant performances and place in Academy Awards history, Oskar Werner's legacy lives on.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is available to stream on Amazon Prime. You can also rent it from several services.